From Paul Mulcahy's Twitter Page
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Will is a good kid. Getting looks from Patriot league and stuff. Will have a nice role at Gill this year.
Wish it were so.
The reality is that Rutgers is the 25th ranked public university and the 69th overall.
This is a decline from 50 years ago when Rutgers was 38th overall.
The reality is that Rutgers is the 25th ranked public university and the 69th overall.
This is a decline from 50 years ago when Rutgers was 38th overall.
I'm somewhat doubtful of that ranking from 50 years ago. That would have been around 1968 and at that point, Rutgers was still largely focused upon undergrad education and the faculty were organized into the various colleges (Rutgers, Douglass, Engineering, Ag school, etc.) and reported to undergraduate deans. The rankings we see each year are mostly oriented toward the graduate-research components of universities but RU wasn't there yet. The change began during the 1970s, under Bloustein, which put RU on the path to eventual AAU membership in, IIRC, the 1990s. The faculty were reorganized into New Brunswick-wide academic departments and the research productivity expectations increased dramatically, drawing greater attention to the university's academic programs.
There may be other rankings oriented toward ranking undergrad programs but those draw less attention than the published rankings. They tend to be heavily slanted toward the selective private universities (most privates aren't that selective but must recruit hard to fill their incoming class each year).
I've always been glad that I was an undergraduate before that change was set into motion. I feel that we had the best of both worlds at that time - the benefits of a large university and the advantages of a smaller, quasi-private institution which the old undergrad colleges provided.
And the lenient grade policies of Livingston College, without which I would not have had a decent job out of college.
The quality of the education has clearly decrease over the years. Disgraceful. Thanks President Barchi.
Yes it has clearly decrease(d) probably during Hamilton’s Cannon years in school
Heaven We have had over 250 years to get it right academically and almost 150 to get it right in football. We have regressed with the former and have never made any moves forward with the latter. Damned shame.
You mean the ranking numbers have decreased...
As if those numbers actually affect the motivated Rutgers student looking to get the most out of his/her university.
These ranking systems are one of the worst things that has ever happened to our educational system. It’s very much responsible for the shift in accountability in society from the individual (student) to outside elements (the school).
“I didn’t get a good education because of the teacher, or the school, or anything other than my own behaviors”.
Ahhhhhh, Shuddup. Rutgers is an excellent school today, and has been for years. Our SAT and GPA requirements have been rising for years, and any of the NJ students that look at RU as a safety school are sadly misinformed. We have an excellent freshman retention rate, an excellent 5 year graduation rate (more important than 4 year because we have so many 5 year masters programs) a very good employment rate, etc. Multiple of our programs are top 20 in the nation. Just yesterday I gave a tour and we had people coming from Idaho, Virginia, Maryland, Maine, California, Colorado, New York, Pennsylvania, and Florida just to see Rutgers. (And plenty from NJ)
I entirely agree. All of these are subjective. Not to mention wildly inconsistent. Chancellor Dutta has said that he plans to work to improve our rankings though. Not because he thinks they're a good representation, but because others see them as representative.
Just to clarify, AAU was is 1989. Pretty big feather in EJB's cap.
This was during the potentially confusing period of consolidated faculty but separate academic units for arts & sciences undergrad education in NB. This interim period appears to have been a necessary but painful transition time of about two and a half decades.
As you mentioned, pre-faculty reorganization in NB into a singular FAS in the early 80s, the "federation of colleges" setup based on system modeled after British universities had its merits. Now, the post-undergrad A&S consolidation (2005? and onwards) offers the best opportunity for delivering a more unified and streamlined experience on par with most universities. That 25-year or so transition period, however, may have hampered Rutgers in some ways more than they could overcome through communicating the benefits of a somewhat unique structure to various stakeholders and customers. Interesting legacy nonetheless.
I posit that if you are not doing great research you can only teach whats in a book. If you are doing great research, you have real stuff to impart onto your students.
Point well taken. That was not accurate . Further research reveals that the US News ranking, which began in 1983, had Rutgers as high as the 45th best national university in the 1980s, but now, in 2018, this has fallen to 69th, which is quite a drop. Interestingly, no other school seems to have suffered such a significant decline during that time.
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You are correct in this statement, particularly for rankings that factor in low acceptance rates as a positive. When my daughter visited Florida State a few years ago when she was looking at colleges, she was told that the number of applicants and increased significantly as well as the average GPA and test scores for those applicants. When my wife asked why, she was told it was because they had won the national championship in football. Now do I believe the kids want to attend because they won the championship? No I don't. I believe what happens is winning the championship increases the awareness of the school to many students who then decide to check out the school they hadn't previously considered resulting in an uptick in applications.
The whole argument is so difficult....
On the surface.....NJ is a mess and the residents should not pay indirectly for the funding of these sports.
However a successful athletic department could increase the quality of students that go to Rutgers which over a long period of time could increase who ultimately lives, works and pays taxes in NJ.
On the surface.....NJ is a mess and the residents should not pay indirectly for the funding of these sports.
However a successful athletic department could increase the quality of students that go to Rutgers which over a long period of time could increase who ultimately lives, works and pays taxes in NJ.
This is absolutely not true. Any prof at RU would know tremendously much more than is in any undergraduate textbook. Much more important for a kid at RU is the percentage of undergrad courses taught by tenure track (vs adjunct) faculty and what the salaries are for the many adjuncts who do teach.
As I already pointed out, the US News ratings are complete crock. And I'd like to know if that was Rutgers College or RU. Regardless, what's likely is that because the original ratings were even more subjective and RU tends to be better regarded out of the state, we did very well. But as we haven't made the effort to "game the system" we've dropped significantly.
A different rating agency that specifically focuses on academic prestige just ranked us #32 in the world. Not 32 in the nation, but 32 in the world. Above Caltech, Brown, UNC, USC, UC - Irvine, Dartmouth, etc.
https://thebestschools.org/rankings/best-universities-world-today/
Adjunct faculty were some of the best I had. Adjunct faculty often had excellent real world experience and contacts that they brought into the classroom. And don't underestimate the benefits of great research on the undergrad experience. The fact is that a lot of modern classes aren't just "Books" but are based directly on that research. It makes for a college experience you can't get elsewhere.
Yes, re: adjuncts. But there is no quality control.
Every fulltime professor is doing research--has nothing to do with the quality of teaching. Whether or not it is "world class" is irrelevant to the undergrad experience. What is relevant is that the "researcher" is a teacher first. And that is why many of your best teachers were adjunct.
Have a lot of credits at RU (over 200) undergrad and grad. Have had great instructors who were full time, at and adjunct. Also had some terrible faculty in all three classes. Worst was an adjunct inMBA accounting course who lectures consisted of reading the text book to us.
Doesn't really matter IMO, but it would most likely have been all Rutgers-NB. As of the time of the first USNWR rankings in early 80s, all A&S faculty at NB/Pisc had just become reorganized and unified into a single FAS, even if degree requirements were varied for the different A&S colleges. Of course, since FAS only included A&S departments/programs it never did, and still does not, include the other faculties on campus such as engineering, pharmacy, business, etc. So any undergrad ranking would have still had to combine all of these academic units into a single comprehensive ranking, just like any other university which has multiple schools/colleges.
Seems only Rutgers was so administratively bureaucratic in one aspect of its admissions office, for example, that it listed separate college codes for each academic unit and seemingly expected/required applicants to report SAT scores to multiple individual units (assuming someone was applying to more than one) rather than to a centralized admissions hub that could filter that internally as needed.
Did my graduate work at American U in the late 60's and early 70's on the government's dime. The School of International Service, which was well-regarded. Many of the instructors were adjuncts with day jobs. My instructor for one class was the Desk Officer for the Cambodian Desk at the State Department; another was an acclaimed British lord visiting for the year. My academic advisor, and my teacher for two courses, was the man who set up the syllabus and arranged for the instructors for the class all senior people going to serve in Vietnam took--like Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, and Commander of American Forces, General Westmoreland.
Most of my teachers during undergrad days at RU were not memorable, though a few were really good. My instructors at AU grad school, with one notable exception, were first rate.
TL
Most of my teachers during undergrad days at RU were not memorable, though a few were really good. My instructors at AU grad school, with one notable exception, were first rate.
TL
My daughter gives tours / counsels incoming students at Long Beach State. Each school has something to give...if the students apply themselves.
Saying 1 school is the best is like going to a dance and seeing 50 hot blondes, brunettes, redheads...lots of choices and opinions. History favors the Harvard's, Princeton's, Yale's, Cambridge's of the world....but their history is also tied to their endowments- which helps immensely. We can help by contributing to Rutgers (e.g. your will, annual contributions: they're in my living will).
As for Rutgers place in the US / the World...the name itself garners a great deal of attention / admiration academically. How YOU speak, act and behave will go a long way to increasing our standing or tearing it down.
MO
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